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Favorite Places: Manatee Hammocks RV Park

March 2, 2012 by Pat Bean

 “Hear! Hear! Screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, “winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel if you know where to look for it.” — Henry David Thoreau.

The pier through the trees at Manatee Hammocks RV Park in Titusville, Florida. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Florida scrub jay -- Photo by Pat Bean

I’m sitting by a bank of third-floor windows looking out past naked tree branches at a dull Chicago day in which snow has been forecast.

It’s quite different from the Texas Gulf Coast I left behind. According to today’s weather report, it’s 77 degrees and raining in Lake Jackson. I hope someone remembered to shut the windows in my RV and turn on the air conditioner for Maggie.

Actually I’m sure they – my son, Lewis, and his wife, Karen – did. Karen just texted me that Maggie had a nice walk this morning and shared their steak dinner yesterday evening.

I left Maggie behind to fly into Chicago for a week to visit my youngest son, Michael.

Thinking about my two-and-a-half-hour flight from one climate to another got me thinking about the winters of my past.

Oranges just outside my RV door. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I grew up in Dallas, where we might get a bit of snow that stayed on the ground less than a day. Then there was Texas’ Gulf Coast where the world stayed green through the winter, and a rare half-inch of snow maybe once every 10 years shut down schools.

In January, 1971, I moved to Northern Utah, where I didn’t see ground beneath the snow that year until early April. I took up skiing and came to love the snow.

Since retiring in 2004, winters have mostly been spent on the Texas Gulf Coast, although I did spend one December in Guam, and one entire winter in Florida.

That winter in Florida, while my friends back in Utah were buried in snow, I was seeking out shady spots – and getting a good look at my first Florida scrub jay, a bird that can be found only in Florida – and only in one small portion of the state.

I saw the bird on a tour that was part of the Titusville Bird Festival. For the week I spent in this area adjacent to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, I stayed at the Manatee Hammocks RV Park. It was a delightful place where I could pick fresh oranges just outside my RV door.

Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

It’s Aways a Good Day When I Learn Something New

March 1, 2012 by Pat Bean

 “I believe humans get a lot done, not because we’re smart, but because we have thumbs so we can make coffee.” — Flash Rosenberg.

Kickapoo State Park, Illinois -- Just because I'm currently in Illinois. I sat out a major thunderstorm here in 2006. -- Photo by Pat Bean

And Today Was a Very Good Day

From now on, there will be no more spilled coffee. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I like my morning coffee, strong and heavily laced with half and half.

Drinking two cups every day is my morning ritual. That means I pour coffee into my mug at least, well sometimes I have three cups, 730 times annually. Multiply that by old-broad years.

Now I ask you, how many of those thousands of times that I’ve poured coffee from the pot into a cup do you think I’ve dribbled coffee on the counter while doing so?

My guess is that 50 percent of those times might be a bit too low. And I suspect I’m not alone in this. I’ve tried tilting the pot every which way but nothing ever seemed to work.

It took my son, Michael, whom I flew to Chicago yesterday to visit, to tell me what I was doing wrong. I decided I would tell all you readers who might not be as smart as Michael, who figured it out 10 years ago.

“It’s simply a matter of pouring it slowly Mother,” he told me this morning. “The design of the spout on the coffee pot is flawed.”

And all of a sudden I could see it. Duh! I thought.

So how many of you are as smart as my son, Michael? And how many as dumb as me?

Posted in Journeys, Travel | Tagged , , , | 19 Comments »

Today’s News Made Me Angry

February 29, 2012 by Pat Bean

“If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.” — Marcus Aurelius

Soap Box Day

My rant might not have been pretty, but Lake Reidsville in North Carolina is awesome. I need to sit beside such a place until my blood pressure returns to normal. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I live on a fixed income, almost 20 percent of which goes to pay for Medicare and Medigap private insurance. While it’s too much, I try to be grateful that I can at least pay the health-care costs. Way too many older Americans can’t. And the young and poor are in the same situation.

Then today I read a story about Dallas-area medical service providers who bilked Medicare and Medicaid of nearly $375 million.

But that’s just a drop in the bucket. Health Care fraud costs the government at least 60 billion annually, according to the Associated Press story.

Part of that is my money, and yours, How much less would we seniors have to pay for medical care if the greedy cheaters had a drop of human kindness in their hearts. And how much more would workers get to take home of their paychecks if the cheaters didn’t get their unfair share.

Have these arrogant sons of, well-you-know, been among the world’s population all along, or have we forgotten to teach our children that the world does not owe them a living? What can we do about it?

I wish I had answers. All I can do is hope that some judge, somewhere, will put these greedy so-called medical providers out of circulation so they can do no more harm – and deny them medical care, too.

 

Posted in Favorite Places, Nature | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Weekly Photo Challenge: Indulgence

February 25, 2012 by Pat Bean

Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is more restful.” — Mark Twain

A quiet place to sit in the outdoors on an awesome day is my idea of indulging myself. I can read a book, or just sit quiet and let nature come to me. -- Photo by Pat Bean

  Bean’s Pat: Galen Leeds: Following the tracks of history. http://galenleeds.com/  The kind of wandering/wondering walk I love to take.

 

Posted in Weekly Photo Challenge | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments »

February 24, 2012 by Pat Bean

More About Maine

“I felt like I’d been misplaced in the cosmos and belonged in Maine … I had to live this long, have the experiences I’ve had, to create what I do. I knew I wanted to write for years, but I had to be ready so I wouldn’t blow it. The move to Maine was the final step. ” — Terry Goodkind

Travels With Maggie

Acadia National Park -- Photo by Pat Bean

Yesterday’s blog of a simply photograph, quote and my Bean’s Pat was a throw away, the kind of blog I write when I need a break from writing.

The comments it brought, however, got me thinking more about Maine and the nine days I spent there. The trip was part of a six-month, 23-states-and-Canada, 7,000-mile journey I made in 2006. It was my first time in New England.

I dawdled along the way, so that far too many of Maine’s birds that I wanted to see had already migrated by the time I reached Bar Harbor, Maine. I saw only eight new life birds of the twenty or so I had expected to find. And a storm blew up the day I was supposed to go whale watching.

Other than those annoyances, everything else about my Maine stay was perfect.

Bar Harbor streetscape. While I missed the birds, I caught the town's off season serenity. -- Photo by Pat Bean

One of the nicest things about my stay just outside of Bar Harbor was the free shuttle bus that stopped at my campground every half hour or so, and which took me all over Mount Desert Island, including Acadia National Park while my canine traveling compainion, Maggie, stayed behind in the RV.

The park is full of natural wonders to explore. One of these was Cadillac Mountain, the highest summit on the East Coast north of Rio de Janeiro, and the first spot in the mainland states to be hit by the morning sun in the fall and winter.

I was on its summit one dawn to catch that first ray of rosy light. I laughed, but to myself, when one guy standing nearby spotted a herring gull and got all excited because he thought he had seen a bald eagle. No reason I thought to extinguish his excitement. Later in the day I did see a bald eagle soaring over the park. I hope that guy also saw it.

As replacement for the canceled whale tour, I took a trolley tour of the island. Our guide was full of facts and trivia, such as President William Howard Taft’s 27 strokes on the Kebo Valley Golf Club’s 17th hole back in 1910, and the fact that scenes for the Dark Shadows TV soap opera had occasionally been filmed on Mount Desert.

Hopefully the next time I’m in Maine – a revisit is definitely on my to-do list – I’ll arrive before the birds have migrated south.

Bean’s Pat: All Write: Spring and the Cigarettus Smokerus http://tinyurl.com/7ox9d76 As an avid bird watcher, I laughed my head off at this. But, warning, if you don’t have a sense of humor some among you may find this offensive and sexist.

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travels With Maggie, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Favorite Places: Bar Harbor, Maine

February 23, 2012 by Pat Bean

 “Lie in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Park at the Pier, looking out on Frenchmen's Bay -- Photo by Pat Bean

Bean’s Pat: Zottel is Back http://photobotos.com/2012/02/23/zottel-is-back I couldn’t resist this goat. Remember Doris Day in”Don’t Eat the Daisies.”

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Posted in Favorite Places, Travel | Tagged , , , | 13 Comments »

We’re All Many People in One

February 22, 2012 by Pat Bean

“There come a time when you have to stand up and shout: This is me … I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel … I am a whole complex package .. Do not try to make me feel like less of a person just because I don’t fit your idea of who I should me.” – Stacey Charter

Travels With Maggie

 

This award was started in 2008 by Norwegian, Hulda Husfrue, or so I've read.

Michelle Gilles at Silk Purse Productions Blog (how to make silk purses out of a sow’s ear) nominated me for a Kreative Blogger award. Thank you Michelle at: http://silkpurseproductions.wordpress.com

I’ll use my Bean’s Pat to play it back. This “Pat” on the back goes to my personal choice of the best blog of the day. My choices are eclectic and I hope my readers have been checking them out.

As part of the acceptance. I’m supposed to tell you seven things about myself that you might not already know. I’ve done this before, but this part’s actually fun, especially trying to think of things my blabber-fingers haven’t already told you. So here goes.

Miss Clairol’s Nice and Easy, No. 99 has been my friend for umpteen years. My original color was dishwater blonde. I haven’t the foggiest idea what color it is these days because I try hard to never let my roots show.

I stuck into college without ever graduating from high school, just one among many ways I’ve lived my life backwards.

OK. I admit it. I'm a tree-hugging flower child who believes that some day this planet will be a peaceful place to live. -- Photo by a stranger sharing my day at Custer State Park in South Dakota.

I’m a prolific reader of just about everything – including cereal boxes, bumper stickers, roadside signs and blogs — with the exception of horror. When much younger I watched a Vincent Price horror flick – Murders at the Wax Museum I think it was called, and spent the next year expecting a missing head to turn up in my washing machine every time I opened the lid.

I once zoomed up behind a police car doing 100 mph while driving between Salt Lake City and Wendover, Nevada. I thought I was only doing 70 until I looked down at the speedometer. I’m not sure why I didn’t get a ticket. Perhaps the officer was day-dreaming.

I was 37 years old before alcohol of any kind touched my lips, well if you don’t count my grandmother’s beer, which I’ve been told I stole and drank when I was 3 years old.

I’m speaking tonight at a Blue and Gold Banquet for my daughter’s Cub Scout Pack on Compassion for Animals. I’m going to play the wolf howl-video that I mentioned on yesterday’s blog.

I’ve been living and traveling now in a small RV with my canine traveling companion, Maggie, for over seven years. By the end of this year I should have visited all 50 states. I did Hawaii and Alaska in earlier days, just FYI.

Now I’d love it if my readers would tell me something quirky about themselves.

Bean’s Pat: 10,000 Birds http://10000birds.com Great blog for anyone who likes birds, especially if you’re passionate about them — like me.

Posted in Birds, Books, Nature, Travel | Tagged , , , , | 17 Comments »

Favorite Places: Wolf Park, Battleground, Indiana

February 21, 2012 by Pat Bean

 “Wolves are not our brothers; they are not our subordinates, either. They are another nation, caught up just like us in the complex web of time and life.” -Henry Beston
“The wolf is neither man’s competitor nor his enemy. He is a fellow creature with whom the earth must be shared.” L. David Mech

Howling With Wolves

 

Wolves in Snow. Image Source: http://www.findfreegraphics.com/wallpaper

I was on my way to Maine when I read about Wolf Park, a place where people could howl with wolves.

It was shortly after I had been luckily blessed to see a wild one in Yellowstone National Park, a miracle that I never thought would happen.

The opportunity to howl with one also seemed like a miracle, and so I rerouted my driving route to take me through Battleground, Indiana, and it’s number one tourist attraction: Wolf Park. It’s a place where wolves live as they do in the wild, but were conditioned as pups not to be afraid ofhumans. It’s a research park so we humans can better understand these wild creatures with which we share the planet.

The night I howled with wolves, including Tristan, one of the pack leaders at the park, is still etched vividly on my brain.

When I found this video, I immediately wanted to share it with my readers. I hope you howl along.

Bean’s Pat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqgrfBLIcoA Howl with Tristan

Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, Travel | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments »

I Miss My Old Remington Manual Typewriter

February 20, 2012 by Pat Bean

Here's what my old manual Remmington looked like. Someone on e-Bay wants $299 for its memories. Mine are worth a whole lot more, but I don't need to spend $299 to recall them.

 Mark Twain, according to Wikipedia, claims that he was the first important writer to present a publisher with a typewriten manuscript. It was the 1886 manuscript for “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Historian Darryl Rehr challenged the claim, claiming it was Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi” written in 1883, that was the first.

Once Upon A Time

I taught myself to type on an old Remington manual typewriter. I then got a job as a Western Union typist – I typed up telegraphs from people who called on the phone to send one. My biggest thrill was the day Tennessee Ernie Ford was on the other end of the line.

A familar happening when I typed on my old manual Remington

My typing speed went from 45 words a minute to 120 words a minute. But the job only lasted a few months before I quit to become barefoot and pregnant for what seemed like an eternity.

It was in the middle of my seven consecutive years of changing diapers that I decided I wanted to be a writer. For the next few years I banged out terrible fictional prose and dookie poetry on that old Remington. That’s how you began to be a writer.

Then I stuck into the back door of a small newspaper as a darkroom flunky, and over the next four years worked my way up to being the paper’s star reporter. I thought of myself as a cross between Lois Lane and Brenda Starr.

Eleven years later, when I was a reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, I typed up my first story on a computer. I hated it – for all of two weeks.

At home, however, I was still typing away on that old Remington. But as the computers at work got better and better, I finally gave up my Remington for a home computer. I don’t question that the writing was easier and faster, but to this day, I still miss my old Remington.

Remember changing out typewriter ribbons, and making carbon copies. I suspect only those of us with more years behind us than ahead have such memories.

There was something extremely gratifying about manually slamming the carriage back at the end of each sentence. Then there was the ability to yank a piece of paper, containing nothing but meaningless dookie, out of the machine. The ritual then was to crumple it into a ball and toss the wad into a nearby waste basket.On especially bad writing days, the basket would be overflowing and the area around it a jungle of paper balls.

One simple does not get the same physical release of frustration from merely using a finger to hit the delete button.

The truth is however, that I don’t want to go back. Couldn’t even if I wanted, but it sure is nice to have memories. And that old Remington typewriter, which eventually was donated to a charity thrift store, created lots of them.

Too bad I didn’t keep it. I think I paid $7.50 for it at a garage sale in the early 1960s. I noted today that one similiar to it, if not the exact model, was listed for a $299 minimum bid on e-Bay.

Bean’s Pat: Wistfully Wandering http://tinyurl.com/836mqtu Ditto what she said. A blog for those with wanderlust in their souls. Be sure and check out her first 25 reasons, too.

Posted in Journeys, The Write Words, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments »

Favorite Places: Grand Teton National Park – For One

February 19, 2012 by Pat Bean

“Give me the comma of imperfect striving, thus to find zest in the immediate living. Ever the reaching but never the gaining, ever the climbing but never the attaining of the mountain top.” — Winston Graham

While this tiny creek is too small to make most maps, it makes it on the list of my favorite places. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Wyoming's Grand Teton, photographed at the end of a hike to Taggart Lake, makes my long, long list of favorite places. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I get tongue-tied when people ask me what’s my favorite place among those Maggie and I have visited in our RV travels.

How do you name one among so many?

I’ve discovered beauty and awesomeness everywhere I’ve gone, from coast to coast and border to border.

I’ve ridden to the top, in a tiny cramped ball, of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, stood beneath Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln at Mount Rushmore, and gazed down on New York City from the top of the Empire State Building.

All these places were awesome.

But just as grand and beautiful in the eyes of this nature-loving old broad have been all the nature refuges, lakes, mountains, rivers big and small and even the trees, especially the redwoods, that Maggie and I have visited.

Yes. Perhaps that’s the answer. My favorite place is where Mother Nature resides. 

Bean’s Pat: 20 Minutes a Day: Saturday Morning http://tinyurl.com/6w8ce3h A writing prompt that had me laughing all the way through.

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travels With Maggie, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments »

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